Writer Beware

I first heard of Australian children’s publisher Starfish Bay Publishing (SBP) in 2024, thanks to a question from an author about the advisability of investing in SBP’s Author Supported Traditional Publishing Programme.

In early 2025, a group called Must Read Magazines (MRM) acquired a suite of five well-known genre fiction magazines: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine…

One of the things I often hear from writers whose inboxes are crammed with incredibly personalized marketing or book club or editor impersonation emails–you know, the ones that make it seem the sender has first-hand knowledge of your book and your bio, and

Raymond Love just wanted to publish his children’s book with a trustworthy self-publishing company.

This week, many authors who are part of the Anthropic copyright class action settlement began receiving notices like these: The one on the right invites authors to review and confirm their claims: just making sure all is as it should be.

When I first began reporting on the aggressive AI-driven email scams that have been plaguing the Inboxes of authors everywhere for well over a year now, they were limited to marketing scams offering supposedly expert “visibility” for writers and their boo…

In the early days of Writer Beware–back in the pre-digital era–scammers waited for writers to come to them.

For the second time in four years, the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA) has updated its Canon of Ethics.

NOTE: Several appeals of the final settlement have been filed.

We’re currently waiting for Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin to issue final approval of the historic settlement in the Bartz v, Anthropic copyright infringement lawsuit.